After the Ruthless Empress Was Betrayed, She Begged Me to Keep Her Bound

[Timid, puppy-like younger woman who occasionally gets bold, 0.8 x gloomy ghost queen who knows how to reel her in, 0.2]

[The younger one takes one careful step back after another to save her own skin, but the empress keeps pulling her inch by inch back into the cage]

The day Jiang Xingyun transmigrated into a scumbag imperial preceptor in a novel, she was forcing boiling poison wine down the throat of the future empress.

Looking at Ji Yao curled up on a straw mat in the cold palace, she remembered the original story's ending, where the empress gouged out her eyes, severed her sinews, and hung her corpse from the city gate tower. She quietly switched the medicine bowl for ginger soup. Starting with that bowl of ginger soup, Jiang Xingyun began bringing Ji Yao food and fox-fur cloaks, and discussing books and philosophy with her, all to build up some favorability while the future empress's wings were still growing.

Just as the princess was beginning to let her guard down, the System suddenly warned: [The original owner poisoned the princess with a love curse a month ago. Corruption +50%.]

Jiang Xingyun was devastated. You couldn't have told me sooner?!

That night, candlelight flickered as Ji Yao idly played with a silver needle. “Preceptor, do you know how to tame someone who thinks they're above everyone else?”

She wound bloodstained prayer beads around Jiang Xingyun's wrist. “First, you have to gouge out their eyes...”

The needlepoint pressed against her trembling eyelid. “Then break their pride, inch by inch.”

Jiang Xingyun gouged out her own eyes on the spot.

And so began her daily life of nervous, careful blindness:

Ji Yao changed clothes right in front of her, while she stared at the ceiling beams and recited a calming mantra;

Ji Yao used a silver chain to measure her waist, while she could only stand there and feign confusion;

Until the night the love poison took effect, when she fell into a bath perfumed with an aphrodisiac incense and was caught around the neck by black hair that coiled like a snake beneath the water.

“The preceptor’s blindness...” Ji Yao bit open her soaked sash. “Is it because you can't bear to see me like this?”

Jiang Xingyun stumbled backward in panic, only to feel the black iron chains attached to the bath wall.

Later, after the new emperor ascended the throne, the ministers petitioned to execute the evil sorceress who had brought ruin to the kingdom.

Ji Yao tore the memorial to shreds in court, toying with the imperial seal. After last night's indulgence, droplets of dew still glistened on its crystal-clear surface. Her vermilion-painted fingers stroked it, as though savoring a memory. “She is the auspicious beast I tamed with my own hands... to guard the nation.”

*

I was once a discarded pawn, as lowly as dust, while you were the lofty imperial preceptor. Countless times, I imagined snapping your arrogant spine bit by bit, dragging you down from the clouds into the mud, making you taste the humiliation I had suffered.

But whenever our eyes met and I saw your hazy, lifeless gaze, my heart trembled against my will. I only wanted to fill your empty eyes with myself.

Jiang Xingyun had always thought that she and the empress had fallen in love naturally, their feelings mutual. In truth, it was Ji Yao insisting time and time again that things go her way

The ruler above all others bending her knee, the moon in the heavens falling into the mire.

[Bonus Scene]

“Your Majesty, please believe me. I really can't see!”

Ji Yao seized Jiang Xingyun's hand and guided it to the hollow of her collarbone, then lower and lower, her fingertip tracing an alluring picture. “Then why are the preceptor's lashes trembling?”

Their breaths intertwined. The new emperor, decisive and merciless in battle, smiled as she fastened black iron around her own ankle. “This time, will you be the one to lock me up?”

The rosy stain of her lipstick blurred at the corners of her eyes. The new emperor leaned closer, her chains jingling. Warm breath spilled onto the side of Jiang Xingyun's neck, with a hint of coquettishness. She drew nearer...

The court historian wrote with a trembling hand: The one Emperor Zhaoming kept in the Chonghua Hall was not a demon, but a beautiful woman in white with her eyes veiled in silk. Every night, the sound of golden bells and chains could be heard, accompanied by the empress's sobs, which lasted until the fifth watch.

Reader's Guide:

1. Mainly younger woman x older woman, with role reversal, 1v1, both pure, happy ending.

2. Contains lots of gloomy ghost-queen vibes and tragic, all-consuming love. Proceed with caution if that's not your thing.

Theme: Falling in love with someone is like creating a faith, serving a god who could fall at any moment, from A Chance Encounter in a Dream